New COVID cases tick up across US. How are variants and vaccines doing in Mississippi?
New COVID-19 cases in the United States are ticking back up, but so far Mississippi is bucking the trend.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the seven-day average for new cases in the U.S. was about 8% higher last week than the week before. In Mississippi, the number of new cases reported has fallen 28% in the last two weeks.
On Monday, the state health department reported 70 new cases, bringing the seven-day average to 209, the lowest it has been since mid-April 2020. It also reported 0 new deaths for the second day in a row, bringing the seven-day average number of COVID-19 deaths to 7.71, a slight uptick from the recent low of 5.14 on March 30.
On Monday, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs tweeted a graph showing the number of COVID-19 deaths reported in Mississippi since the pandemic began.
“MS making phenomenal progress!” he wrote. “Let’s keep it up and avoid the 4th wave.”
Last week, Gov. Tate Reeves extended the executive order lifting the state’s mask mandate. He also revised upward capacity restrictions at indoor sports arenas from 50% to 75%. The mask mandate at schools is still in place.
Which Mississippians are most vaccine-hesitant?
On Sunday, Reeves appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union,” where anchor Jake Tapper asked him about some Mississippians’ reluctance to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
“So many people, primarily Republicans, do not want the vaccine,” Tapper said. “Would you like to see former President Trump do more to promote it?”
Reeves told Tapper that a strong endorsement from Trump — who got the vaccine before leaving office and told Fox News in March that he would recommend it — would be useful, but not sufficient to persuade reluctant Mississippians to get vaccinated.
“Well, I certainly think that President Trump and other leaders across America, not only political leaders, but leaders across all methods, would be helpful,” Reeves said. “More than anything else... we need to educate folks. We need to make sure that we educate our people and let them know that this vaccine is safe.... I think the education piece is more important than the endorsement piece.”
A poll released last month by Millsaps College and Chism Strategies showed that only 20% of Mississippians now say they definitely or probably will not get vaccinated, a significant decline from early January when about half of respondents said they would not get the vaccine.
Registered Republicans and white Mississippians are less likely than registered Democrats and Black Mississippians to say they will definitely get the vaccine, surveys show.
The poll found that 86% of Black Mississippians said they either would get vaccinated or have already been vaccinated. Early in the vaccine roll out, addressing Black Mississippians’ concerns about the vaccine was a major priority for the health department, which has coordinated with Black doctors and faith leaders to promote the vaccine and hold community-based vaccination events.
Early on, vaccine rollout was marked by dramatic racial disparities, especially on the Coast. But in the state’s most recent vaccination report, Black Mississippians had received 31% of all vaccine doses, closer to their share of the population, 38%.
The Millsaps-Chism poll found 69% of Republicans and 71% of white Mississippians say they have already been vaccinated or definitely will get the vaccine.
Hispanic Mississippians are still receiving a disproportionately low share of the vaccine: state data shows they have gotten only 1% of all vaccines, though they comprise about 3% of the population.
Vaccination rates on the MS Coast
So far, according to the health department, 25% of Mississippians have received at least one vaccine dose. Every county in South Mississippi is lagging somewhat behind the state average.
Here are the number of people and percentage of population in each South Mississippi county that has received at least one vaccine dose, according to the state health department:
- George: 4,721 (19%)
- Hancock: 8,795 (18%)
- Harrison: 48,847 (23%)
- Jackson: 33,476 (23%)
- Pearl River: 9,928 (18%)
- Stone: 4,060 (22%)
Variant strains in MS
One wild card in Mississippi’s and the nation’s recovery from COVID-19 is the emergence of variant strains that are more contagious and cause more severe illness than the original virus. There are currently five variant strains in the United States, four of which have been identified in Mississippi.
So far, available vaccines appear to be effective against the strains.
Dobbs has encouraged Mississippians to get vaccinated to help prevent the strains from spreading.
Testing for the variant strains is still limited, so data on the number of cases is almost certainly incomplete.
Here are the number of variant cases reported so far in Mississippi and in Coast counties:
- B.1.1.7 (United Kingdom): 70 in Mississippi, 4 in Harrison County, 4 in Jackson County, 1 in Pearl River
- B.1.351 (South Africa): 1 in Mississippi, 1 in Harrison County
- B.1.427 (California): 4 in Mississippi
- B.1.429 (California): 3 in Mississippi
Cases and deaths in South Mississippi
Here are the total numbers of cases and deaths in South Mississippi counties since the pandemic began:
- George — 2,368 cases, 46 deaths
- Hancock — 3,703 cases, 84 deaths
- Harrison — 17,418 cases, 299 deaths
- Jackson — 13,054 cases, 242 deaths
- Pearl River — 4,395 cases, 139 deaths
- Stone — 1,776 cases, 30 deaths
- South Mississippi — 42,714 cases, 840 deaths
